I’ve tried to resist getting into politics on here. A blogger shouldn’t be your go to source for politics and I should probably avoid offending people with my views. But I’ve already called kids disgusting, claimed free will doesn’t exist, and presented the existence of God as impossible. If you read through that, then this is nothing.

So recently I got into an argument with someone on YouTube. Pathetic, I know. I am not a strong man. This someone claimed that Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a black supremacist terrorist organization that incites violence and criminal activity. He also found it important to draw the parallel to the KKK by saying the KKK isn’t as bad nowadays about stirring up racism.

I hope you’re seeing some errors in his thinking. I sure did. I commented that while individuals of the BLM movement have taken part in criminal activity, they do not represent the whole of the movement. And perhaps more importantly, BLM does not condone or encourage such activities. The KKK on the other hand does encourage and has for decades encouraged criminal activity.

The YouTuber stated “The people’s actions represent the movement they associate with” and also claimed BLM did encourage criminal behavior. “That’s why they riot, want ‘dead cops’, etc.” I’m not sure where he was quoting that from.

I informed this guy that the actions of a follower do not represent the movement as a whole. After all, I could kill someone in the name of Jesus Christ, but that doesn’t mean Jesus preached murder. And to prevent a circular argument (BLM preaches peace. No, they preach violence. No, they preach peace…) I went to their website and looked at what they truly advocated. Two examples: “We are committed to collectively, lovingly and courageously working vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people, and by extension all people.” Also, they say, “We are committed to embodying and practicing justice, liberation, and peace in our engagements in one another.” I admitted that violent members of BLM should be punished, but the movement should not be held responsible when it preaches peace and denounces horrible actions.

Yeah…he didn’t buy that. Actually I’m not sure it’s a he because his profile picture is a picture of Anne Frank with Hitler’s face pasted over it. Anyways, he believes the actions of the majority of a group represent the group as a whole, and I suppose the majority of BLM members are criminals. He believes BLM does encourage violence despite everything I said, and added that they want to push the idea that whites are responsible for the actions of black people. As evidence he stated that BLM was ignoring the fact most blacks are killed by other blacks. Then…god, I’ll just quote him because it frustrates me too much to paraphrase: “Now, BLM has followers and most of them, not individuals, seek black supremacy, are aggressive, violent, hypocritical, racist, etc. People make up the movement. And when shitty people make up that movement, guess what the movement becomes – shitty. I would argue that groups like BLM are the reason racism is still alive today. Before Obama took office and BLM became a thing, racism was slowly but surely dying…”

My latest comment: I challenged him to use data to analyze how many people are part of BLM and how many actively take part in criminal activity. I also responded to his assertion that BLM ignored the fact most blacks are killed by other blacks with a quote from “11 Major Misconceptions About the Black Lives Matter Movement,” an article from the BLM website. Number 1 on the list of misconceptions was that the movement doesn’t care about black-on-black crime. BLM, of course, addressed this issue and ironically gave the statistic that 93% of black people are killed by black people and 84% of white people are killed by white people. But the statistics are besides the point in question. They are a different issue of poverty, poor education, and so on. The statistics are diversionary from the issue of racism, which can still occur even if it occurs within that 6% of murder or takes a different form of abuse and discrimination as is often the case.

Racism is hard to quantify since it’s an abstract concept, so I can’t confirm whether racism is/was on the decline. I’m not sure anyone can, at least not at this moment. Yet, if anything, media has uncovered much of that lingering racism. Perhaps media is targeting the worst cases of the racism argument to sensationalize the news and boost their ratings. BLM is part of that media coverage, maybe because of the actions of certain individuals in their following. Even so, they aren’t at fault because they have advocated peace and denounced the criminal actions of some of their followers. Whatever the case, the media shows us that racism remains even if it is/was on the decline.

Also, I don’t know why Obama was included. What did he do? His election gave us hope that racism was disappearing. But also as a president in general, he did a good job: brought unemployment down from over 8% to 4% which the majority of economists consider to be the natural rate of unemployment (i.e. best case scenario; 0% unemployment actually isn’t ideal, but that’s a different blog post), oversaw the elimination of Osama Bin Laden, recovered the US economy from the collapse he inherited from Bush (the DOW is almost 20,000!), and brought crime to its lowest levels ever. Yes! Lowest. Ever. Excluding a small handful of cities, the crime rate has decreased in most cities and in the country as a whole. Keep that in mind as the media covers all this crime and racism. You may find it all shocking and disgusting, but this is the best it has ever been. Let that be a reminder of how far we’ve come and still how far we have to go.